The Shadow Puppet
by Kitsune Alchemist
Summary: If they're two sides of the same being, then it shouldn't be this hard to synchronize. Only, it is. And in Love, that can never be a good thing. RiSo, AkuRoku, Onesided LeaSo, Onesided Nobody!RikuRoku. AU


Disclaimer: All ideas recognized as belonging to others are copyright to their respective owners.

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At birth, the two were separated; the child and his shadow. It was a sick practice, pulled through years by people who knew no better, for that was how they had been raised, separate from their child that would complete their soul. It was this way through the fragile years of adolescence when a child wanted nothing more than someone who would understand completely, and it was this way through the early years when the children who were no longer children were first beginning to branch out and find the one they would fall in love with.

It was thought that if a child knew love first, they would not mistake the completeness they felt with their other half for the completeness that would come from loving and being loved in return. It was a good thought, a kind thought, but a mistake one, none-the-less.

In the beginning of time, before there was talk of shadow-brothers, and shadow-sisters, known only to the world as Others and Nobodies, it was simply a thing of beauty, to be able to, from birth, hold the child who shared your soul in your arms, or to be held. It was simply a blossom of relief for the Nobodies – and what a cruel, cruel name, the people said, but never thought to change it – to be able to feel the pulse of the heart that was theirs but not theirs and know that they would never have to worry about love, for their Other, their Somebody, would find it for them.

The tradition started, as history recalls in brief fragments and timeworn pages lost to flame and moth and the murky corruption of dust, with a nameless man with too much time, too much power, and no instinct of kindness to temper his cruel curiosity. What would happen, he queried, if the children were separated. What did the Nobodies hold that made them so necessary to the existence of the Somebody? Or if there was nothing, why did they exist?

He started with a boy-child named Terra, and another named Ventus. His only female test subject was a young girl by the name of Aqua. These children, were taken from their mother, and their other half from the shadow-mother. Ventus was taken with Terra and placed in one section of the scientists castle. Aqua was taken, not alone nor with her Other, but instead placed with Ventus' Nobody, Vexstun. The last two Nobodies were placed together, Raxert and Aquxa, alone in the final area.

He observed them all, along with another child whose name has been lost to the gaps in memory, and though most of the finicky details have long since lost their way along the path of time, it was known, for a time, quite explicitly, the data from his trials. The boy, the epitome of normalcy in regards to this experiment, became weak. Too simple, too perfect they said, and when the first of the great wars started, he was the first to die, for he had not learned the lessons necessary of him while in childhood – whether this was ever attributed by even one person to his solitary life inside the laboratories, it is not known.

Aqua, the only girl-child, left alone with another half that did not belong to her became a broken doll. Every night, she clung to the Nobody that was not hers, and he clung back. The bond was forged and broken, because there was no way for him to understand how she worked when at the age of fourteen, she became bitter and unkind to him and would not let him hold her safe and soothe her bitter anger. She too, died early on in the wars, with someone else's Nobody at her side, and in the cruel parody of love he held for her, he stabbed himself through the chest only to find that he had no heart with which to love her, and he had never met the one who held the one he should have used.

It was a strange phenomenon, a well known one, though, that accounted for the death of Aquxa in the exact moment that her Other fell. It was perhaps the inversion of this that sent Ventus stumbling to the ground to grasp at himself as if to assure himself that he was living as the little puppet boy, the poor little shadow that fell in not-love with a Somebody, breathed his last. This too would not hold in the throws of battle and even as his Nobody died, he was shot through the heart that they would have shared.

Terra held the boy in his arms and then fought for him, for he was the last, and he had never had to share his heart, and thus had given it all to the dead child that lay alone amongst the corpses of those whose practical doppelganger lay at their sides. After the battle – a dark blur of death and hatred and pain that would have stripped Terra of his soul had he ever held one – Terra finally met the only subject that was left, and as he stared at the boy who made him complete, and Raxert stared back with all-too-hollow eyes, they could have told you that the experiment had failed.

But this was known not, and only the man's flawed data was recorded, and as their use came to an end, so did their reason for being, and they could do nothing but find those they loved, and their counterparts and share the stories of their fallen companions as the four corpses burned to ash and were scattered to the sky and the sea while Terra and Raxert stood, side by side, and oh-so-alone, on the land.

The fallen boy was never known to the two, and thus why his name was not recorded and his memory not preserved past statistics. Had they known, perhaps they would have been jealous or pitying, but instead, they went home hollow and numb, their eyes never meeting, and swung their blades in battles to come. On they fought - for what other purpose was there? - over and over until they could no longer count how many years it had been since they met, nor how many it would be until they died with a final synonymous exhale, their bodies marred by the wounds of war, and their respective halves, the heart and the soul, marred by the wounds of a lifetime.

The professor regarded his breakthrough as extraordinary. He had created the perfect soldier, one unaffected by the trials and tribulations of emotions, for emotion was all but foreign to them before the Great Battle, and the aftertaste of war left a strange hollowness in the strongest of joined souls, to speak nothing of alienated and broken ones.

This was how it came about, perhaps, but passed down, it became less a matter of war, for as time passed, and peace once more upheld its firm rule over the land, and more a matter of both tradition and of love. Who could say why matters of love were so important to this society, nor when it had become the foremost in their existence? It is likely that that, too, has been misplaced in the chapters of history.

But so it was, the practice of keeping the children separate, not until they were of age, but until their 14th birthday. It was on this day that a child met his nobody for the first time, and while it is not on one such day that our story is begun, we must only roll the clock back a few meager days to begin our tale of love, betrayal, and the choice between one's heart or the one held closest to it.

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Believe me when I say that I kind of confused myself when typing this. I suppose I should stop challenging myself to use new writing styles.

The randomized Nobodies created for this chapter will not come in again unless they are mentioned in passing only, and even then, I'll probably have a reference to their Somebody first to clarify. It is surprisingly hard to make Nobody names that make any sense at all to say aloud.

I have the next chapter planned out already, but I can't give a timeline on when it will be done. Sorry. Other than that, leave me a review and tell me what you think. If you have any ideas, drop'em on in, and I can't guarantee I'll use them, but they do always help.


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